Falls Prevention

Falls Prevention

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In the hospital setting, falls continue to be the top adverse event and injuries from falls are often associated with morbidity and mortality. A considerable body of literature exists on falls prevention and reduction. Successful prevention strategies include identifying patients at highest risk for sustaining serious injury from a fall, multifactorial assessment (estimating danger of falling based on known intrinsic and extrinsic factors), interventions (preventive action to modify and compensate for risk factors), and systematic reporting of falls incidents and their consequences. Many interventions to prevent falls and fall-related injuries require multidisciplinary support for reliable implementation for specific at risk and vulnerable subpopulations, such as the frail elderly and those at risk for injury. All efforts must be made to ensure that patient safety programs are in place across settings of care.

This How-to Guide highlights four promising changes designed to reduce patient injury from falls on medical-surgical units; specifies practical step-by-step changes that can be tested; and provides tips, tools, resources, and case studies of hospitals that have implemented many of the changes.

Getting Started: How to Improve

Learn about the Model for Improvement, forming the improvement team, setting aims, establishing measures, and selecting and testing changes. Go to How to Improve.

In this video Chuck Meek and Suzanne Rita present an overview for the creation of customized interventions to prevent falls and subsequent injuries for the patients who are at most risk for serious injuries from a fall.

The Healthy Communities Collaborative in the UK has achieved an impressive 32 percent reduction in falls among older citizens — translating to an annual savings of roughly £630,000 (US$1.45 million) — by mobilizing average citizens to use improvement methodologies to achieve measurable and sustainable change.

Ten percent of fatal falls among older adults occur in the hospital. As part of its participation in the Transforming Care at the Bedside initiative, MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas (Houston, Texas, USA) decided to focus on preventing falls.